He was more handsome than any demon could ever be, at least to her. His long, black hair softened the severity of his sharp, angular face. A few early threads of gray touched his temples, the only physical sign of his tendency to worry. Other than a quiet warming of his eyes sometimes, when he looked at her in a way that always made her heart race a little faster, he never smiled. She wondered if that would ever change for him, or if he was so damaged he could never allow himself to feel any real joy in life, as Creed had insinuated. He was too afraid if he found it, he would lose it again.
That was his greatest fear.
“You have something you want to say to me?” she prompted him.
His eyes were on her face but did not warm the way she liked. She felt the earth become unsteady beneath her feet, as if she were about to be thrown from the mountain at any second. Terror seized her with icy hands.
“Roam says more people will be coming here,” he said.
His manner was not encouraging but on this one point, Raven refused to yield. “We’ll have to make room for them, then,” she said. “We can’t turn them away.”
“No. But how long will it be before there is no more room left here for me?”
The words made no sense to her. She frowned at him. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. You’ve organized most of the work. You’ve helped repair the houses so we all have warm places to live. Why wouldn’t there always be room for you?”
His eyebrows rose. “I’m mortal.”
The implication stunned her. He was Blade. She did not think of him as mortal or anything other than himself. To her, he was larger than life—more than all of the mortals and immortals combined.
Without him, she had no world, no purpose. Nothing.
“If this village can’t be a haven for all, then it’s a true haven for none,” she said. “What about half demon children? Their mortal mothers should be made to feel welcome here, too. If they are, then women who were seduced by demons will have no necessity to rely on men like Justice for protection.”
“The others may not feel as you do.”
“Walker and Laurel will,” Raven said without hesitation. “If the others don’t, you and I will move on and find another place where we can welcome the people who need it. Or they can move on instead.”
Quiet intensity spilled from him. “You would do that? Move on with me?”
“How could I not?” she asked, bewildered again. It hurt her to breathe. “I thought the tentative arrangement you and Creed reached with the Godseekers and assassins meant you could be happy here, or at least content. Are you telling me you don’t wish to stay with me? That you don’t want me with you any longer?”
“I’m trying to say I have nothing to offer you.”
“I have nothing to offer you, either. Other than my love,” she added, very quietly.
He did not speak. She could not tell what he thought or how he felt about her disclosure. She had put it out there, and now he could not ignore it or pretend it did not exist. Creed was wrong—Blade knew his feelings very well, except he chose which ones to acknowledge. If he was going to walk away from her, she would at least make him be honest with regard to his feelings for her.
“Did you know the amulet was meant for a demon’s mate when you gave it to me?” he finally asked.
The question unbalanced her further. She could not absorb the meaning behind it or what he wanted to learn. Did he think she had tried to trap him with the amulet? To bind him to her?
“I know my father meant it for my mother because he thought she was his,” she said. “But she had to accept him in return to truly be his mate, and she never did. Not completely, in the way she would have had to.” She tried to smile. It did not feel convincing, even to her. “She wasn’t an especially brave woman.”
“She refused to be parted from you, which made her braver than many other women,” Blade said.
That was true, Raven thought, surprised by his insight. Her mother’s life had been a difficult one. She had once walked amongst demons. If she’d not had a skill that made her valuable to her community, she might not have survived as long as she had or been welcome at all.
“The moment I accepted the amulet from you, I knew I belonged to you,” Blade continued. “That connection to me is why you think you love me.”
He thought she was the one who had been trapped. Either way, it did not matter. “It’s a connection I don’t wish to break. I don’t think I love you. I know I do.” She closed her gloved fingers around an object in her pocket. It was a gift she had been working on for the past few days but she was no longer certain it was appropriate to give it to him. “That amulet you wore was meant for my mother and no one else. It had nothing to do with my feelings for you, other than that it was something precious to me that I wanted you to have. It has nothing to do with how you feel about me either. You believe you belong to me only because you love me, too.” She drew a deep breath. “Until you can understand and accept that you’re using that amulet as an excuse to avoid your feelings for me, then no, you really don’t have anything to offer me. All I want from you is your love.”
The faint hope she felt rising in him, and the way he refused to allow it to fully surface, made her want to weep for him.
“What about children?” he asked. “Do you want those, too?”
“If they’re yours,” she said.
The hope in him swelled a little more, the barrier against it ready to break, yet still, he resisted. “You don’t want children of mine.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “Demon blood has already been mixed with mortal. That can’t be undone. Do you think any children we might have between us will be somehow better or worse than the ones that already exist?”
“I haven’t led the kind of life most fathers do. I wouldn’t make a very good one.”
Relief left her faint. She gave a small laugh, even though tears blurred her vision. “My father was a demon,” she said. “You hardly compare to that.”
He did not seem convinced, but she knew that he wanted to be. She stripped off her gloves and stuck her hand in her coat pocket, withdrawing the gift she had crafted for him. It glinted in the light, a heavy silver chain attached to a thick chunk of smoky quartz that she had carved into a dagger-shaped pendant. Walker had searched the mines for a lot of hours to find her exactly what she wanted.
She reached up to place the chain over Blade’s head.
“This is a dream stone,” she said, “from the mortal world. It has no special properties. You can’t walk in the demon boundary or create one of your own when you wear it. It won’t protect you from demons. It’s a symbol of my love for you and that I dream of you, nothing more than that.” She tangled her fingers in the silver chain and drew his mouth to hers. “You’ve faced demons for me. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to prove his love more than that—although I’m not asking you for proof I don’t need. I’m asking you to allow yourself to love me back.”
He cradled her head in the palms of his hands, resting his forehead to hers. “I do love you. I can’t promise I’ll be good at it because I’ve never loved anyone before, and the thought of failing you frightens me far more than demons ever could.”
“Fail me?” She fought back tears. “You saved me. When I set Justice on fire—when I watched him burn in the boundary—in the back of my head was your voice, telling me you aren’t afraid of the demon in me. That I’m not a demon. You can only fail me now by not allowing yourself to love me.” She slid her arms around his waist. “Can you be happy here?” she asked, suddenly anxious. “With me?”